Wow, so a lot has happened since I last posted on here. I think that I am just really bad at this stuff. It was a fantastic winter filled of snowboarding and hanging out with friends. This spring I went home for two weddings that I was in and they were a blast!

Work has been going really good I have been in helicopters and have been able to see some beautiful British Columbia weather. I just found out recently that I will be transferred to Kearl Lake; which is in northern Alberta working on an oil sands project. In some ways I feel like I am selling my soul to the devil by working on an oil project, but then somebody said to me I will be actually going up there for the right reasons by trying to make a cleaner project versus one of my engineering friends who is also very environmentally conscious who he would be going up there for pure production.

This project is a much larger construction site it is another camp job but has 3,000 people at it versus 300 that I am used to. There are a couple of different activities going on up at Kearl Lake, AB; earth works, river water intake, structures, and deep underground. Believe it or no I will be heading to the deep underground section. This move will be an excellent career move; both with Kiewit and for any future employment that I may have, but I think it might be a little hard on the soul. After going through so much with the people at this camp they become your very close knit family and now I have to leave them.

I am very excited for this new opportunity and I am ready for any challenges that may come from it. On the bright side; it brings me that much closer to the Midwest.

Yay I got my stuff

So I am just coming back from a very busy turn around. I received all of my stuff on the 4th of February and then I attended our district meeting which was the 4th-6th. The weekend was made for recovering and iceskating. On Wednesday I went up to Whistler to go snowboarding it was a lot of fun and I ran into some old Michigan Tech friends it was grand!

Now I am back at camp and working hard for the money, but still loving it!

Here is a parting shot for you to until I get motivated and post pictures. It is of Chris and I doing a spill response training.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Terms I think of when it comes to moving.



So after making more phone calls to my moving company, I finaly got somewhere... My stuff is being picked up tomorrow from Traverse City, after sitting with that moving company since the 29th of December. If it is picked up in the morning and they start drving right away (which I doubt) The earliest it could be here would be Sunday :-P



But I did say good too... Because Kiewit has been in buisiness with United for so long (over 20 years) They have a killer contract with them and for every day you are passed your "window" (Jan 6-14) I get $125 (USD) so if it doesn't come for 4 days, I will get $500 not to shabby of a deal. Maybe this will pay for ticket for a trip somewhere :)



Anyways back to work I go just thought I would update you on the progress.



By the way my new address is:

467 E. 22nd

Vancouver, BC V5V 1T9

My digits are still the same: 517-420-2783

Work Number(Camp): 604-629-9080 ex.102

Email: mecypher@gmail.com

Back to Life Back to Reality...

I realize that it has been a long time since I have updated this page; bare with me. My average day at work is at least 12hrs long, usually the last thing that I want to do be on a computer, but I do understand that this might be some people’s only way of knowing what is going on in my life so I will do my best at least updating on the blog once per week. So here we go:
After the accident the moral was really low, but if you can find a silver lining in such a tragic incident; it would be that it did bring our worksite close together. All in all people seem to be getting a long although a day does not go by without thinking about it. I would also like to take the time to say “thank you” to all the kind words that I received from all my friends and family.
Work as a whole is going really well, I truly do like my job a lot. The people at the site are great and I am starting to make friends. Right now I am in a coffee shop down from my house in search of internet, no such luck so I decided to blog on MS Word instead and post it later. I am very anxious to get back to camp and fall into a routine again, so I can feel like I have a purpose in life once again; instead of being a slacker. As of today I have had three weeks off and I don’t go back until Thursday the 14th.
This was not by choice; I got a phone call yesterday saying that my spot on the plane to go up to camp was going to be taken by another person. This was in lew of all the snow that the Pacific Northwest got. Apparently there is four feet of snow at camp and we were not ready to handle that, so there is no work being done until we get people up there that can take care of the snow and my seat got given to one of those people. Yes this does mean that I get another week off, but now all of these days that I have had off have been coming out of my “banked” days. Banked are earned for every 5 days you work you earn 2 banked days. Now I am in the negative, so I have to earn all these days back :-P I am hoping to get a hold of my boss today and see if I can work out of the head office so I stop going into the negative (we’ll see). Or I might just say “F” it and try and enjoy the time I have off, even though I don’t have my stuff here from Michigan yet.
This is a whole new story in itself. My stuff that was in storage got picked up on the 29th of December and today is the 8th of January and it is still not here yet. Come to find out it has not even left Michigan yet, so I am not quite sure when it will get here. It’s a bummer because I can’t really “settle” into my house yet.

xo mol

p.s. I am going to a hockey game tonight on the company's tab, oh some times it is nice working for "the man"

Tragic News

There was a plane accident yesterday on the charter flight that we take to get to our work site eight people were on that plane including the pilot, seven people died and one managed to crawl out of the plane before it caught on fire. I knew one of the guys quite well, he was a very young and talented engineer who created 3D drawings of our work site and showed us how it was going to look afterwards. The pilot was the man who flew me in on my first flight very friendly and knowledgeable. I pray that their families can find some sort of peace and the others who were lost in this tragic incident. Here is a news article on the story:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=171bbaf0-97c6-49d1-a155-23c54756cf68

When things like this happen it really make you realize that you should take nothing for granted and always tell your friends and family how much they mean to you. As for me I know I have the best ones out there.
Miss & LOVE all you guys. Wish I could be surrounded by you now.

XOXO - Mol

I love the mountains...

Just another rough day at the office… So I haven’t posted in a while due to my very busy schedule up here. I start work at about 6:30am and if you start at 7:00am you are considered a slacker. I try to be done by 6:00pm so I can have some time to unwind. Even though I am very busy, I have loved my job I get to get out of the office everyday and play around in mud and water and do manual labor. Then in the office I do a lot of permitting making sure that we are compliant with the government and the Klahoose (The First Nations tribe out here). Which really hasn’t been that bad.

All the people here are quite nice, but I have never worked on a construction site before and the language is quite colorful. You also have quite an array of people here from kitchen staff to craftsmen, all the way up to your lead engineers and staff.

Right now I am counting down the days until I get to leave for my turn around 5.5 days and I will be out for ten days. Over my break I plan on going to opening day at Whistler (the ski mountain up here), opening day is on Thanksgiving so if anybody wants to come and join me feel free! Everybody up here will be working because they do not celebrate Thanksgiving the same time we do. Tricia and I plan on having an American Thanksgiving on that Saturday the 29th so that will be a lot of fun!

The Picture that is up top is a view that I have from one of the intakes, not too bad.

The one on the left here is of me so happy to see the snow! Behind me is a lot of water I am standing in the old river bed and we had to divert the river to construct the intake at the top of the river. Which we will eventually end up diverting back once the intake is finished being built.

Well that’s all I have time for now, until next time.

XOXO - Mol

New work Picture

I just wanted to post a new picture of me at work this was my first day on the job and me being the dork that I am had to make a comment on the soil horizon so they took my picture by it. Seriously though the "O" Horizon which is the organic matter is taller than me!